Pearl Jam – grunge pioneers, Ticketmaster’s nemeses and holders of a gross joke name that doesn’t need thinking about – aren’t huge fans of music videos, despite being very good at them. They shunned them almost for the entirety of the 1990s, releasing three albums in a row with no supporting videos at all. 1992 to 1998 was peak MTV, but Pearl Jam didn’t want to play the game.
Their fifth album, 1998’s Yield, brought in a few changes to the band in general – they started working more collaboratively than before, and taking a slightly looser approach musically – and the decision was made to return to the world of music video, albeit in a way that didn’t involve them being filmed or anything.
A big bluesy banger, the song Do The Evolution was heavily influenced by Ishmael, a novel by Daniel Quinn about the hubris of mankind and is, according to Eddie Vedder, about "someone who's drunk with technology, who thinks they're the controlling living being on this planet."
It’s also a really good video. It’s a big, exciting, depressing, beautiful, hideous, heartbreaking cartoon.
Let’s watch it…